Looking back on our Organ Donation Wales campaign – one year later

A year ago today, and after three years of working on the advertising campaign to introduce the change, Wales had just become the first and only nation in the UK to introduce a new law for organ donation. It meant that those who felt strongly enough would need to opt out of organ donation, rather than those wanting to donate having to actively opt in. Crucially, it meant that doing nothing also equated to assumed consent for donation.

Golley Slater was tasked with highlighting the sensitive and emotive subject of organ donation, and communicating to all individuals in Wales the details of the new legislation. We did this via a TV campaign and supporting out-of-home materials, with the creative focusing on the concept of time – specifically the importance of it when an individual and their family are waiting for an organ to become available.

Our campaign achieved 75% awareness of the new law by the time it came in to force, and in the first 6 months alone, the number of donors increased by 34% from the previous year. Over 60 organs were donated, resulting in dozens of lives saved.

Looking back on this campaign and the change in legislation itself is particularly emotive for the Golley Slater team, not least of all because the wife of our digital designer Luke was waiting for a double lung transplant at the time that the new law was introduced. As luck would have it, Kimberly ended up getting her life-saving transplant just weeks after the change in the law, on Christmas Eve 2015.